Delfinware 3-Tier Plate Rack

Cost: £36 for the version coated in white plastic. £60 for stainless steel.

Contents:

• A three-tier plate rack. (Size: 525 x 412 x 250mm.) The top tier takes side plates and bowls, the middle tier takes plates, and bottom shelf takes mugs, etc.


• Slide-out tray for catching drips.


• Three-compartment cutlery holder.

Comments: I've never really been sold on the idea of having an automatic dishwasher. When I was growing up, my mum always seemed to be loading or unloading hers. Stuff needed rinsed before it went in, there was usually some sort of Tetris-style challenge to make everything fit and she still had to do a load of washing-up herself to deal with large or delicate items or things which she needed in a hurry. Putting the machine on after tea left a fun load for her (or me!) to put away before bed. Even when I helped fill it, she quite often seemed to have to entirely re-arrange the contents afterwards. The machine simply didn't seem to save much time overall and occasionally broke down in spectacular fashion. (Although the same could possibly be said of my dad now she's finally taught him to help but at least he's company...)

I just haven't had much desire to own one myself. Then again, that's maybe because for the last ten years I've been using one of these dish racks. It can hold a day's worth of crockery from a family five, so I seldom have to do much drying. This halves the time it takes to do the washing-up by hand. The rack is so strong and accessible, I don't even have to bother unloading half the stuff - I remove things as I need them and only put away what's left when it's time to wash-up again. It's tempting to buy a second one and use them in rotation so when it comes to washing-up time, one's empty and the other's full of dry stuff to use.

(Actually... Our local ironmongers is closing so I've already panic-bought a spare one and put it in the loft, just in case anything happens to the first. Perhaps I should go get it...)

The manufacturer's photo above is all very well at showing the sort of thing the rack will hold but it doesn't give much idea of quantity. They clearly weren't trying:



Honestly, it's great. The only downside is that if anyone offers to help with the washing-up there won't be much for them to do except stand around getting in the way. Get them to go clean the shower or something.

Conclusion: The best dish drainer ever.

Pros:

• Almost eliminates the need for dish cloths.


• Holds twice as much as other dish racks while taking up half the space.


• Sturdy.


• Durable.


• Suitable for using to store crockery as well as as a dish drainer.

Cons:

• If you have cupboards above your worktop, the rack won't fit underneath.


• Stuff on the bottom can take a while to dry.


• You'll have to find a stockist.


• Doesn't cope with every type of bowl (notably including those brightly-coloured ones from Ikea everyone has).


• So good that you may find yourself buying an extra one for emergencies...

Rating: 5/5.

DadsDinner Awards for 2008

Welcome to a low-down on the best and worst that's been released in 2008. Well, actually, not all of this stuff was released in 2008 - it's more a low-down on the best and worst stuff reviewed by DadsDinner in the last year.

Er, hang on, I haven't got round to reviewing all this yet. And I've probably forgotten stuff. Oh, and if I gave a list of the worst stuff, it would be full of obvious tat for the Wii and DS and I can't be bothered with that.

So...

Welcome to a low-down on some of the best and most disappointing stuff that DadsDinner may or may not have reviewed in 2008.

Hmmm... I think I may have to hire a second-rate comedian and an X-Factor runner-up to present this next year and add an extra touch of professionalism...

Now, without further ado, here are the categories:

Films

The Best

The Dark Knight - As I keep saying, all superhero franchises should somehow start with a sequel. This second film in the new era is markedly better than Batman Begins and is packed full of action, mayhem and moral deliberation. Would you press the button?

Stardust - A sparkling, witty, hugely imaginative adventure that's the best thing since The Princess Bride.

The Disappointing

Hellboy 2 - Then again, maybe I'm wrong about the superhero sequels. This is a disastrous mix of lacklustre humour and out-of-place special effects. It's like the first film got spliced with Labyrinth. I kept expecting a bunch of muppets to turn up.

Battlestar Galactica Season 4 - The plot went pear-shaped in the last episode of Season 3 and things never entirely recover. It's still good but just not great.

WALL-E - Dull, dull, dull. Shoot me now.

Computer Games

The Best

Civilization Revolution - A turn-based strategy game that's accessible enough to just pick up and play but complicated enough to be entirely engrossing. Experimentally proven to be better than beer.

Fallout 3 - A post-apocalyptic adventure in the nuked remains of Washington DC. Sure, the combat is sometimes a little ropey and scavenging for supplies can get annoying, but how many other games can serve up totally fresh situations and experiences after thirty-five hours? Fallout 3 has the most fully-realised world in gaming.

Dead Space - It doesn't offer anything much new but this is the best survival horror game in a while. The graphics are excellent and there are any number of scares. If the sequel has better puzzles, it will be superb.

The Disappointing

GTA IV - Over-familiar, bloated and squint-inducing. Oh dear...

Card and Board Games

The Best

UNO - A simple card game that requires a little strategy and a whole heap of concentration. It can keep the entire family occupied for hours.

Cadoo - Pictionary, Charades and a couple of quiz games all rolled into one. Most importantly, it even works with two players.

Actually the worst

Junior Scrabble - Dull, dull, dull. Hit me over the head with a copy of WALL-E now.

Other stuff

The Best

Iceland chopped onions and peppers - I stopped buying fresh onions because I always discovered them turning blue at the back of the fridge a few weeks later. I hardly ever got round to chopping them. Now I can just rummage around in the freezer and pull out all the diced onion I could possibly want. It's an instant way to add flavour and vitamins to almost any meal.

Aveeno - Moisturising cream with the power of oatmeal! Fantastic on eczema and almost any other minor skin complaint.

Battery converters - They magically turn AA batteries into C and D batteries. This is very, very useful.

LOVEFiLM - Unlimited DVDs and games delivered to your door. Vast choice, excellent service, a great price and you get exciting post! Go on, you know you want to...

The Disappointing

Bath toys - Liable to go manky if combined with bath water. This is something of a design flaw... Rinse out some plastic bottles and give them to the kids instead.

Well there we have it. Give a big round of applause to the winners and shake your head sorrowfully as the losers shuffle off in shame. Feel free to add your own suggestions if I've missed anything.

And that's it for 2008. We're back to whatever random tack I can lay my hands on next time. Happy New Year!

Battery converters

Price: Somewhere between 50p and £1 each depending on brand and pack size.

Comments: I'm forever re-charging batteries. Between the remotes for the Wii, a bunch of toy telephones, a couple of Leapsters, some torches, a handful of electronic cars, a talking Iggle Piggle and the flipping glow-in-the-dark baby which plays a tune every time Sproglette turns over in the night, I'm constantly tripping over little gizmos that are in need of portable electricity. There's always at least one that's running low on juice and announcing its imminent death with a long, low rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star which is painfully out of key.

This isn't a problem for the vast majority of items, since they run on AA batteries. With today's technology, I can have four more AAs super-charged in under an hour and the toy will be good to go for weeks.

The difficulty is with the stuff that needs bigger batteries. We only have four rechargeable C batteries in total and they take an entire day to charge. When Elefun runs out of steam, it's really rather a while before he's ready to play again. As for the things which runs on D batteries, we don't have any suitable rechargeables at all nor anything with which to recharge them even if we had.

I've been pondering buying some more big rechargeables and a suitable recharger for a while but could never face coughing up the cash. Then I discovered battery converters.

They're fantastic.

The converters are simply casings to house AA batteries to make them the right size to fit into slots for C and D batteries. Since AA batteries are the same voltage as C and D batteries, they work just as well. (My new AA rechargeables are higher capacity than my old C rechargeables, so they actually last longer.) The C converters are plastic tubes with an internal collar to hold an AA battery in place. The D converters have an extra metal cap on the end to make the converted battery long enough.

Now, whenever Elefun goes floppy or Sproglette accidentally leaves her lantern on overnight, she doesn't have to pull a sad face and wait until the weekend for me to have got round to sorting the situation. I can go straight to my stash of ready-charged AAs and have her toys working again in minutes. Hooray!

And no more D batteries for the landfill either. Double hooray!


Battery converters = elephant Viagra

Conclusion: Why didn't someone tell me about these before?

Pros:

• Cheap.
• Simple.
• No more lengthy recharging.
• Means you're much more likely to have the right battery to hand.

Cons:

• Worryingly short of cons.

Rating: 5/5.

Iceland diced onion & sliced pepper

Price: £1 for a 1kg packet of frozen diced onion or sliced, mixed pepper.

Comments: I vaguely remember that I used to cook. I'd select a recipe, buy the ingredients and lovingly craft a meal. The results were usually quite tasty.

Now I don't cook - I merely prepare food. The kids won't eat much besides sandwiches and raw fruit and vegetables. It's a suitably nutritious diet but it doesn't involve much culinary skill.

For logistical reasons, my wife and I don't eat until after the children are in bed. I'm tired and hungry by then, so I want the food to be pretty much ready the moment Sproglette's light goes out. This means trying to concoct something while simultaneously overseeing the bedtime routine. It's usually easiest to to close my eyes, rummage around in the freezer and shove whatever comes out into the oven. This doesn't work so well with ice-cream but the results are nearly always tasty enough and much, much quicker to obtain than preparing stuff from scratch.

These packs of chopped onion and pepper have made a difference, however. They've made 'proper' cooking seem possible again. I can bung some in a pan and I'm halfway to a meal already, without having to faff around in the manky depths of the drawer at the bottom of the fridge. It's a great way to make mince more interesting. A bit of meat and chilli becomes fajita filling. Add cheese and a couple of eggs, and it's an omelette. Almost anything can be bulked out and jazzed up.

I've even taken to sprinkling some in with the cheese when making toasties. Mmmmmm...

Conclusion: It took me a moment to locate these in the freezer cabinet at my local Iceland store the other day. The mere thought that they'd been discontinued made me freak. (Hence the review. Everyone go buy some NOW, just to make sure they keep stock levels high.)

Pros:

• Counts towards your five-a-day fruit and veg total.
• Saves on time, tears and money.
• Means there are always peppers and onions in the house and you can be certain they won't have turned blue.
• Adds taste and colour to almost anything (except cake).

Cons:

• Results of cooking are more watery than cooking from fresh.
• Slices of pepper are quite small.
• Freezing & extra cooking not great for your carbon footprint.
• The kids probably won't touch the stuff.
• Once you get the toastie-maker out of the cupboard, you'll be living off charred bread and cheese for days. Even a smattering of onion isn't going to make that healthy.

Rating: 4/5.

Aveeno moisturising cream

Price: £7 for 100ml.

What is it? A fragrance-free, moisturising cream for dry and sensitive skin. Brought to you by the power of oatmeal.

Comments: I've given a lot of advice about kid stuff to all kinds of people over the years but the one single product I've recommended the most is Aveeno.

Sprog1's skin cracked inside his elbows and behind his knees when he was a toddler and we ended up having to administer antibiotic cream, Hydrocortisone and E45 cream according to a complicated daily timetable in order to get things back under control. The Hydrocortisone made the eczema calm down but, whenever we stopped using it, his skin flared up again. The E45 slowed the deterioration but we always seemed to be back on the Hydrocortisone within three weeks.

Hydrocortisone comes with all kinds of scary warnings about not applyng it too much or too often, so we weren't happy about using it all the time. Our doctor prescribed a succession of creams and lotions. A couple of these didn't do any good and one made the eczema angry (like The Hulk but red). Epaderm did manage to stop the flare-ups but it has the consistency of wax. I had to grease Sprog1 three times a day. Disregarding the inherent difficulties of handling a greased toddler, the major problem was that all his clothes gradually turned into oilskins. He didn't get wet when it rained but he got hot and sweaty really easily and, since his clothes were waterproof, the sweat couldn't escape. He started to smell funny. Even then, the eczema didn't go away - it was still easy to spot which areas of skin were affected.

We went back to the doctor and asked to try something else. She prescribed Aveeno cream.

It was magical.

The eczema disappeared within a week. Patches of skin that hadn't been right for months suddenly got better. Oatmeal is truly a wonder of nature.

I can't guarantee it'll be effective for everyone but it's definitely worth trying.

On the downside, It only comes in 100ml tubes and I now have three children who require it on a regular basis. Each tube doesn't last long. It's free on prescription because the kids are under sixteen and, at SEVEN POUNDS A TUBE over the counter, I'm pretty grateful for this. At one point, Sprog1 was needing slathered all over three times daily and we went through a tube every other day. Fortunately, they all just need a little on their arms and legs twice a day now. Nonetheless, I still get ten tubes at a time and the local pharmacist has grown to recognise me. She apologises for not having enough in stock the moment I enter the shop.

Conclusion: I just wish it came in bigger tubs.

Pros:

• Can clear up dry skin astonishingly quickly.
• Not very oily.
• Works great on chapped hands, too.
• Is magic.

Cons:

• Expensive.
• Only available in small tubes.
• Getting the dregs out of the tube is a pain.
• Can make a child smell of porridge if applied in vast quantities.

Rating: 5/5.